Chinese and Comparative Philosophy 中國哲學與比較哲學

Menu

NECCT 2016 Schedule & Information

(This post will stay at the top for a few weeks so potential attendees can be reminded to pre-register by emailing Manyul Im.*)

Here are the program schedule and travel information for the 5th annual Northeast Conference on Chinese Thought, November 5-6, hosted this year by the University of Bridgeport.

*For the purposes of facilities and meal preparation, if you are not a presenter or chair in a session, please send a quick note to Manyul Im (manyulim@bridgeport.edu) if you are planning or likely to attend. There is no registration fee, however space is limited.

The Arnold Bernhard Center is located on the western edge of campus, on the corner of University Ave. and Iranistan Ave. The address, for mapping purposes, is 84 Iranistan Ave. Bridgeport, CT. Parking is free and open either on the street or in the parking lot next to the Center.

I wonder what more could be done in the future to attract participants from beyond Philosophy departments. I see a small number of participants who are historians (Radice plus Brooks & Brooks), two acupuncturists (Jackowicz and Marks), one participant in political science (Nancy Wei), and one in religious studies (Bin Song). Literally all the rest are in either a Philosophy department or the philosophical wing of a Philosophy & Religion department.

Nothing against philosophers, but if the idea (and the reason why we say NECCT and not NECCP) was to hold interdisciplinary conferences on Chinese thought, it seems that the project has started to diverge from its original mandate.

Maybe the rest of us haven’t done an adequate job of publicizing the event among our cohorts? Or maybe–and I don’t mean this sarcastically–the upshot of previous conferences that made more overt gestures toward interdisciplinarity was that we’re all talking past one another and we may as well give up?

I’d say that your count of seven participants who are from beyond Philosophy departments isn’t bad, but of course more would be nice. It may be that “Thought” reads as “Philosophy” to non-Philosophy people, so “NECCT” isn’t producing the intended effect over and against “NECCP.” Maybe in future calls for abstracts, we should be more explicit about the broad range of what “Thought” means for the purposes of this conference. Perhaps some discussion of this subject should be taken up at this year’s event.

For what it’s worth, the “NE” part of “NECCT” is also an important part of the conference, and I do think that the meetings have generated a sense of community within this (broadly defined) region. (Not that you have suggested anything to the contrary.)

Although I have not been involved in this year’s NECCT (owing to being out of the country), based on past experience my bet is that the biggest practical obstacle to a better resolution of the problem that Paul has raised stems from the “inadequate job of publicizing” issue. Although the CFP is public and in principle anyone can find it and respond, networks of people who focus on other approaches to Chinese thought are less well tied in to the NECCT and to Warp, Weft, and Way, I’d say. John Berthrong attended at least once before his retirement, and his students have been involved, but other graduate-level teachers (e.g., Martin Kern, Michael Puett, Peter Bol, …) have not, and we haven’t had many of their students. So maybe that suggests a way to direct outreach in the future?

I say that this is a practical obstacle, but it’s also relevant that interdisciplinary is hard, and takes extra work. Sometimes we *do* talk past one another — folks on all different sides can fail to see what the point of other folks’ research programs are. I don’t think this is a reason to give up, though!

I like the conference a lot. The size is manageable, and really conducive to discussion. Although I am a scholar of religious studies, to study religions from a philosophical point of view is one of my focuses. But I do hope there are at least more historians to participate. This can not only add historical support for philosophical discussion, but also facilitate dialogues with our current historian participators, whom I also love a lot.